There Will Be Blood.https://dryvby.wordpress.com
Blog from the mind of DryvBy about video games, retro and new.Thu, 31 Aug 2017 08:36:58 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/af85739a8c5201db3edc8c191e6b4e81?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngThere Will Be Blood.https://dryvby.wordpress.com
Review: DOOMhttps://dryvby.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/review-doom/
https://dryvby.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/review-doom/#respondSat, 14 May 2016 18:20:54 +0000http://dryvby.wordpress.com/?p=3521]]>Purchase on PC, PS4 or Xbox One.

After the unsuccessful multiplayer beta, there wasn’t much hope for the reboot of the grandfather of all first-person shooters. DOOM looked as though it’s fate was already sealed as a major disappointment of the year. Even some of the initial trailers made the gameplay look fast but not necessarily DOOM-fast. And it seemed there was a very limited amount of enemies on the screen at once. But upon release, the concerns I had were abolished after the first couple of levels in the campaign.

A few years ago, id Software put out Wolfenstein: The New Order and it managed to be a very successful return to the franchise. The fast-paced Nazi killing action was a warm welcome to an era of cinematic campaigns. DOOM provides the same approach with even less focus on story and more focus on weapons, secrets and killing lots of demons.

There’s three modes in DOOM: campaign, multiplayer and SnapMap. DOOM‘s campaign features intense action similar to the original games. It’s pure chaos and exactly what I was hoping for. With hardly any knowledge of what’s going on, you start the campaign with an energy pistol and a couple of demonic possessed scientist to take out. You continue through the map looking for an exit, and taking the heads off of any oncoming enemies that try to stop you. Each mission is loaded with challenges and secrets to look for in their unorthodox (at least for today) map layouts. Instead of heading from one side of the map to the other in traditional modern fashion, you’ll have to look for colored keys to open locked doors to proceed. Secret areas contain hidden weapons or collectibles, as well as challenge rooms. Challenge rooms pit you in tough situations to obtain a rune that will help you throughout the campaign. While these runes are generally not exactly necessary to the core game, they do have helpful attributes to help you along with way even if it’s something as simple as attracting health packs to you from further away.

Each mission is packed with enemies to kill. It’s a fast-paced action game and requires you to be aware of your surroundings at all times. When they introduce a new enemy, you’ll see that enemy appear in the mix more frequently. And the enemies are impressive, each with their own attacks and abilities. DOOM already has a collection of established demonic enemies at their disposal and they introduce some new meat to destroy. An area can be covered with enemies and that’s when you pull out the big toys to play.

The weapon selection is very classic DOOM from shotguns and machine guns to plasma rifles and rocket launchers. Each weapon can be upgraded with weapon upgrade points to compliment your play style. As an example, the single barrel shotgun features either a rapid fire or explosive shell tech tree. It’s up to you how to customize your weapons.

A major concern I had was if this game would feel like classic DOOM or end up paying tribute while going down a similar path DOOM 3 did. I’m proud to say I felt like this game was zapped straight out of the early 90s right into a modern game engine. It’s been a while since I’ve had to constantly look for health packs to heal or move constantly to avoid deadly projectiles. Being hit in DOOM takes a toll on your life bar so finding ways to heal is essential. They present a new way to kill any enemy to obtain health and ammo called Glory Kills. At points, enemies will be stunned in which a melee attack will brutally kill off said enemy in a stylized fashion. This releases orbs of health and ammo to you to keep you in the fight. It’s a bit distracting at first but after I was used to it, it was really cool looking and never really broke up the action.

id Software developed id Tech 6 (or id Tech 666) for this reboot. It’s a beautiful and solid running game on PlayStation 4, usually never dipping below 60 frames per second even in the most chaotic battles. It comes at a small cost however. Similar to id’s last engine, id Tech 6 has texture pop-ins that can be a bit distracting. It’s not near as noticeable as id Tech 5’s pop-ins, but it happens occasionally. If you’re unfamiliar with what this looks like, it’s when the textures and bump maps haven’t fully loaded on the screen and gives a very low polygon look to every object in the world. It’s a lot less frequent this time around, but it still needs to be said.

Audio quality is extremely well done almost every aspect. The first praise goes to Mick Gordon‘s incredible industrial metal soundtrack. When the music kicks in during intense action, it’s almost rhythmical to dance around your enemy and unleash hell on them. It’s never overbearing or distracting from the horrific sounds of the atmosphere. It’s a complimentary treat to hear it kick in at extreme moments. Outside of the music, the game has an incredible sound stage for those with home theater systems or hi-fi headphones. Each shot from a gun feels powerful and has a deep boom to it. The shotgun is surprisingly the weakest sounding weapon, but it still packs a punch through your speakers.

Sadly, there’s not a cooperative campaign mode like older DOOM games but that’s where SnapMap comes in. SnapMap is a creation tool for designing single and multiplayer missions, competitive maps, and new game modes. It’s incredible simple to use similar to the editor for TimeSplitters. There’s basic gaming logic that’s snap-able too, so you could potentially make your own campaign and publish it on DOOM‘s community servers. If it’s good enough, it may be featured content in the SnapMap menu for all to see and download.

I decided to create a pretty basic map to play around with this mode for the review. After a quick tutorial, I was hooked creating a horror mode with puzzles and Dark Souls difficulty with my enemies. Everything from the monsters to the light sources have programmable properties to easily tweak your creation to exactly how you want. For something so simple to use, it’s surprisingly deep with options. It should be interesting to see what creations fans create for the community.

The last mode to talk about is the core multiplayer. It’s the least favorable mode for some after the beta letdown. It’s understandable since fans were looking forward to pure twitch/arena shooting. Instead, we were given an arena shooter without weapon pick-ups and armor that looked torn from the Halo universe.

Has it improved? A bit. I’m less annoyed with the multiplayer as a whole, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. One of my original complaints with the public beta was the use of demon power up and melee attacks. It seems to have been addressed as I haven’t seen non-stop demons running around and someone hasn’t snapped my neck every other death. They should patch in a classic mode that eliminates class selecting and giant demon power ups. Arena shooters might be a hard sell to today’s audience, but having that mode would be a nice gesture since this game is a reflecting on the past.

The amount of customization is nice as everything can be changed from different armor styles to even the amount of dirt and scratches that appear on the paint jobs. Weapons can be customized cosmetically too. The more you play, the more you’ll unlock. The problem is it’s just not the best way to play an arena shooter these days. Copying the early access Unreal Tournament on PC should’ve been their goal. But if you really just want to blow stuff up online, DOOM isn’t the worst multiplayer game that’s came out in recent years. It’s legs are just really short.

While the multiplayer isn’t anything special, the rest of DOOM is. It’s one of the biggest surprises of the year so far and nothing to ignore. If you’re into deep stories and thought provoking campaigns, you’re out of luck. DOOM wants you to rely on what it original gave you in the 90s: swift thinking and fast reflexes. This is just another fine game of 2016 and something I recommend picking up immediately.

The Collector’s Edition is up on Amazon for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. I’d stick with the basic collection. Or the Enlist Edition to get some extra goodies. Below is a screenshot of the collector’s edition:

Battleborn is an online multiplayer arena shooter that relies heavily on MOBA gameplay. For those unfamiliar with the MOBA genre, it’s strategic in it’s gameplay that requires team work instead of a one man army controlling the board. There’s 25 characters to launch, each with differing abilities.

Shadow Complex Remastered is an action game in the style of a Metroidvania featuring bosses, exploration and lots of shooting. The original was considered for serveral Game of the Year awards in 2009 during it’s original release on Xbox 360.

The Park is a horror game centered around an abandoned amusement park and looking for your lost son. The Park has been on Steam since last year and has received an overall positive rating with 1,464 reviews as of this writing.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is the long-awaited quadrilogy (if you don’t include the Vita game) to Naughty Dog’s series. Nathan Drake is out of retirement to find a fabled treasure with his brother Sam. If you’re unfamiliar with the series, it’s the most Indiana Jones adventure you’re going to get out of a video game.

DOOM is the father of the first-person shooter and it’s seed is back. Instead of returning to the slower pace of DOOM 3, DOOM is returning to some of it’s original roots with ridiculous physics, shooting mechanics, and movement speed. It also features a return to arena shooter multiplayer similar to Quake and Unreal Tournament.

Valkyria Chronicles Remastered is coming to PlayStation 4 after a successful re-release by Sega on PC. The setting is a fictional World War 2 based in fictional Europe called Europa. This is one of the fastest playing turn-based tactical games you’ll play.

Remember that game that flopped hard last gen? Well, someone thought making a new Homefront would be a good idea. The basis of the story and gameplay wasn’t the problem with the original; it was the incredibly short campaign that did it in. Let’s hope this sequel lets you at least dig your toes in the sand before ending.

Blizzard is known of WarCraft, StarCraft, Diablo and The Lost Vikings. They’re not known for competitive shooters. Overwatch is a cooperative multiplayer shooter in the gameplay style of Team Fortress 2 but using MOBA-like characters. All of the planned DLC is free and included with purchase.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan is the PlatinumGames take on the 80s/90s comic style of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Shredder and the Foot Clan are back in New York City causing mayhem for the Turtles in an all out war. The gameplay is similar to any PlatinumGames (fast combo counting action) and does include coop. Cowabunga!

Total War is a series known for high-quality tactical strategy. Warhammer is known as the inspiration behind WarCraft. Combining the lore of Warhammer with Total War just makes a lot of sense. Expect long winded battles, thinking, and a pile of dead bodies on the playing field.

One Piece isn’t your typical fighting game like Street Fighter. It’s more of an arena fighting game. You still pull off combos, finishing moves, and string moves together, but you’re not defined to just facing a character. If you’ve played Power Stone on the Dreamcast/PSP in it’s day, you’ll have a bit of an understanding for how the movement and maps work. If not, then just imagine a giant arena with several ways to attack an opponent.

]]>https://dryvby.wordpress.com/2016/04/30/may-2016-releases/feed/0DryvBy3-bborn.jpg3_superhot.jpg3-shadowcom.jpg3_parkthe.jpg3-rayg.jpg10_uncharted4.jpg13_doom.jpg17_valkyriachron.jpg17_homefront.jpg17_shadowofbeast.jpg24_overwatch.jpg24_tmnt.jpg24_twwarhammer.jpg31_onepiece.jpgGamer Gets Death Threat from NPC, Sues Game Developershttps://dryvby.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/gamer-gets-death-threat-from-npc-sues-game-developers/
https://dryvby.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/gamer-gets-death-threat-from-npc-sues-game-developers/#commentsTue, 12 Apr 2016 23:29:56 +0000http://dryvby.wordpress.com/?p=3220]]>On April 12th, a player by the name of xXCareBear4Life420Xx was threatened on Xbox Live. Unlike most death threats, this was by an Non-Playable Character (or NPC) in Ubisoft’s recently released video game Tom Clancy’s The Division. The threats caused so much social anxiety and fear of going out in public that reports are coming in of the player suing Ubisoft Massive, the developers of Tom Clancy’s The Division, because feelings were hurt and NPCs are scary.

Basically what xXCareBear4Life420Xx would look like.

Police were called at approximately 2:33 am this morning after xXCareBear4Life420Xx heard an NPC aggressively yell at his avatar, “There he is! Kill him!”.

“I should feel safe on the internet. And I should feel safe when walking around a post-apocalyptic New York City in a video game,” xXCareBear4Life420Xx explained while we blazed one up in his trailer. “Games are an escape from reality, man, and I feel like it’s scary when an NPC runs at you screaming they want to kill you. That’s just messed up.”.

“We take these types of internet threats very seriously, even though statistically speaking you’ll have more chance of dying from a lightning strike,” police chief Ronald McDoodle said.

The NPC was shot in self defense and was unable to comment, however, we can report that it was a middle-aged white male waving around a sub-machine gun.

With more and more children (or “adults”) on the internet, reports of internet death threats are coming in at an alarming rate. Reports of harassment on Twitter are also catching storm as xXCareBear4Life420Xx had to delete his account after someone said his facial hair looked like shaved pubes pasted on his face. But in gaming, NPCs are threatening more and more online without little involvement from the federal government to take action.

When asked what President Obama was going to do, a spokesman replied, “We’re proposing Congress to pass the National Hurt Feelings bill to stop developers from threatening their fans with offensive and hurtful words via NPCs while waiving a virtual gun at the player. This kind of thing shouldn’t be happening in America. It’s not the 90s anymore.”.

The first court date is expected during this summer during E3. Ubisoft Massive and Ubisoft has yet to return our calls.

Editor note: This is Channel FU44 closing with this: internet death threats are as dangerous as drinking too much orange juice. Once in a blue moon, you may choke on some orange juice. And by that same measure, you’ll be killed by someone on the internet. Gamers have experienced death threats for years since first launching an online game. On Quake III Arena, I learned I was a faggot.

I’ve been threatened my entire life on games. If I could just count the times someone has threatened to rape my mom. So here’s to you, modern internet: grow thicker skin and quit playing real life victim over digital trash talk, no matter how stupid and appalling it is. Muting and blocking does wonders!

The comparisons between the newly released Tom Clancy’s The Division and 2014’s Destiny are making it’s rounds across the internet. Both are similar in structure while being different games almost entirely. One is an online coop role-playing first-person shooter while the other is an online coop role-playing third-person shooter. With similarities all over the place, it’s time to find out just which game does it better because competitive behavior is all the rage these days.

Loot/Gear

Both games are heavily reliant on finding sweet, sweet loot. Every enemy, every chest has a chance to drop that upgrade to take your damage or damage resistance to the next level. While both games offer a wide variety of gear drops, Destiny‘s loot drops feel more rare when they do fall. The Gjallarhorn from Destiny‘s arsenal took some players months to obtain, and then some hardly any time at all. Most legendary gear felt like an achievement of sorts to obtain. Some gear is locked behind events such as Raids or special weekly events. And after Destiny‘s game-changing patch before The Taken King released, every item you had gave you a bonus of sorts including Ghosts and backpacks.

The Division didn’t launch with raid gear but it is coming soon. Instead of finding Ghosts and capes, you find mods for your weapons and armor to increase their stats. The one really cool thing that The Division does better is providing an appearance system that changes just that: appearance. Destiny offers a different way to customize the look of your character through shaders. Shaders change the color scheme of your character to almost anything imaginable. If you want a bright glowing teal with white, you can do it.

After playing enough of The Division to get a good look most of their high end loot, I can say that The Division doesn’t offer as a rewarding feel for getting drops. This may change in the coming weeks with more content, but the glaring difference between The Division‘s loot and Destiny‘s loot is that the legendary drops from Destiny feel legendary. By that I mean you can recognize loot by not only look but sound. When someone fires off a Suros in Destiny, it sounds a lot different than a typical sub-machine gun. Each legendary weapon has a specific look to it that is very unique is style, look and ability. Each legendary armor piece looks completely different from rare items you’ll see.

The Division suffers a bit for being a “realistic” game. It’s legendary gear looks all about the same outside of sometimes having a different color scheme. I upgraded from a superior AK-74 to a high end AK-74 and outside of having different stats, it looked about the same. The Division at least allows you to equip as many high ends as you want, which Destiny never did. But I can’t say The Division doesn’t loot and gear better than Destiny.

Winner: Destiny

World Design

The Division is going to have a tougher time in this category because it’s held back by realism. You’re stuck in one area: New York City. And not even all five boroughs. You’re in a portion of Manhattan. That doesn’t mean that The Division is completely shallow. In fact, The Division does Manhattan really well. There’s a lot of scenery from a real world perspective and having visited myself, it’s really accurate. I had a friend leave a safe house and locate me using the street and cross street. That’s really cool.

There’s a few areas of interest in The Division. Outside of just looking at sky scrappers, cabs and trash bags, the main missions let you explore deeper into Manhattan. One of the first missions you do takes you to Madison Square Garden and shows how much of a nightmare New York City has turned into. Outside of the main missions, there’s not a lot of a uniqueness to the world even in the Dark Zone. You can go in a few buildings, but they feel copied and pasted from the other areas in the game. I don’t know how many times I ran into the Grow Home board game on the shelf. Once you put in some times, you see how much of the content and scenario is copied from another area of the game. Yet, they managed to have some of the most detailed trash bags I’ve seen in game. Much love was given to those trash bags.

Destiny doesn’t keep you pinned to one location and each map is properly big enough to transverse using a speeder–I mean, a Sparrow. There’s several worlds to visit, each with their own unique theme and enemy. The Division‘s main campaign takes you deeper into the world. So does Destiny. And Destiny was a let down when it released. A lot of land mass was missing from their initial unveiling. However, there’s still more world design and unique areas to visit even in vanilla Destiny. It helps with the nature of the game to see a completely different setting when you’re grinding away for gear or materials.

One final nail in favor of Destiny is the world has actual players walking around outside of instanced zones. A huge bummer with The Division is that random players are tied to certain locations, making less of a case for an always connected world. Destiny‘s worlds actually feel more alive due to this and is the case shut for Destiny taking this award.

Winner: Destiny

Joining Others In-Game

Destiny and The Division are both pretty much the same for match-making. In Destiny, you go to your in-game friends list and can see all the active players to join. In The Division, you can see all your friends walking around the map and join them. Both games let you teleport to them while in party and makes for a terrific and nearly fluid experience.

Both games always have a strength above the other. Destiny‘s is what was mentioned above vaguely. You can see other players running around in the world and not in just certain areas. But The Division has a much cooler way of showing off where your friends are playing on the map. While Destiny‘s in more serviceable, it’s too difficult to choose between the two because they both have a strong case.

Winner: Tied

PVP

I’ve put my dear sweet time into Destiny’s PVP. I’ve ranked to the highest level on the Iron Banner a number of times. I’ve played several days worth of PVP. And I even got a collective whooping from other astounding players in The Trials of Osiris. But the modes are the all about the same. And the random loot monster seemed to always reward weaker players with better loot. Luck of the dice, I guess.

The Division brings back something I’ve been dying to have back in games for a long time as seen from this NeoGAF post from 2012. Hardcore PVP has a very nice risk and reward system. In The Division‘s Dark Zone area, you might get a quality drop and have a chance to lose it by some knucklehead killing you for fun. That sounds awful to some but if done correctly (which The Division does), it leads to an incredible experience. You have to trust (and be cautious) of every single player. Even players in your team.

Or you can just be like me and murder everyone you come in contact with because being wanted and surviving is a fun metagame.

Winner: Tom Clancy’s The Division

Story

You’d think The Division could walk away easily with this one as Destiny has a very generic sci-fi story on the surface. Yet The Division doesn’t do anything exciting with it’s story. You don’t even have a really good idea the time from the initial virus outbreak to your current story. Is it a week? A month? Years later? They don’t even fill you in on some of the more basic operations of the game. I’d like to know why red barrels have made it’s ugly appearance all over the place. And why are these looting bad guys shooting up supplies when they could be stealing it for their home base?

Joking aside, The Division has an awful story that’s not interesting at all. I finished it without a care for an single character in the game. But at least The Division‘s lame story is in the game. Destiny went with the idea that people want to collect cards and then go read about them on an app or website. What were they thinking?

While Destiny‘s story in-game is generic and doesn’t fulfill you’re desire to care about why you’re doing anything, the cards reveal that there’s much more than meets the eye. A lot of speculation has floated around about who the Traveler is, who guardians actually are, down to who Xur actually is. Most can be read about on forums or Reddit, but since most of what we do know is generic, it’s hard to give Destiny the win here. The Division and Destiny have bad stories.

Winner: Tied for having bad stories.

Mission Design

Both of these games are grindy. You’ll be doing a lot of the same stuff a lot to maximize your level and gear. And in that grind, you have missions you need to complete from campaign missions to side missions. The Division and Destiny have very similar campaign layouts. You go to an instanced area. You fight waves of enemies. You may or may not encounter a boss depending on the mission. The biggest difference? Destiny‘s core campaign requires you to activate waves of enemies using a Ghost rather than automatically activating the wave.

The Ghost used to activate waves of enemies was a major complaint when the game launched. Nearly every mission required you to hold a button at a computer while a few waves of enemies came in. It wasn’t transparent enough for a lot of gamers. Understandable too. The Division doesn’t do much else other than remove the Ghost and gets you right into the fight. Some missions have a “Ghost” mechanic such as scanning an area before an ambush, but it’s a lot more rare. As far as campaign designs, there’s not a lot of difference in content. It’s short wave survival. Destiny has platforming puzzles sometimes which changes it up. The Division doesn’t have a single puzzle that I remember of doing. That’s a mild difference but it’s something.

Here’s where Destiny outranks The Division. In Destiny, you have some side quests known as bounties. Bounties are daily rewards for completing various tasks. Some bounties are to hunt down a specific AI, gather certain materials, do community events, and more. You also have Strikes that are better than the core missions themselves with better rewards. The Strikes allow you to experience even more of the land mass and see (sometimes) unique looking bosses. The Division has zones with the exact same missions copied and pasted around the map. From your starter zone to your ending zone, you’re doing the exact same missions. You’ll rescue someone. You’ll find a cell phone. You’ll hold down a location. You’ll hunt down some named elites. Over and over again.

Just imagine a lot more icons all over the map.

The Division copies the worst parts of Ubisoft’s games by adding a map full of icons to go after. And much like every Ubisoft game, they’re all the same thing over and over again. It’s one of my biggest complaints in my review. It’s flat out boring to do the same side mission over 10 times in a different area. Because Destiny offers a change of pace with Strikes and quick playlists to get into another event, I’m giving the win to Destiny. If that’s not reason enough, The Division doesn’t even have community events to keep the monotony of exploring the same area slightly fresher. Most any massive multiplayer, pseudo or real, offers some type of event that knocks you out of formation.

Winner: Destiny

Launch Game Lasting Appeal and End Game Content

The Division just came out and I’m done until there’s more content unless I want to take gear away from players in the Dark Zone. I have an inventory full of rare guns, armor, mods, and costumes. I don’t think The Division has legs to keep people sitting there for months to a year unless the Dark Zone and daily repeat missions keep you going. That is until the content rolls out. Destiny suffered from repeat missions as well, but given the worlds and the loot, Destiny takes the cake. Given the gameplay style of The Division, I don’t really know how long the raid content will keep me entertained unless they throw in some puzzles and unique looking bosses that require different play styles.

The Dark Zone is something I’m going to continue to visit from time to time as it’s the best feature of this game. Maybe if the entire game was built around the Dark Zone, I’d have a lot more desire to jump on. But once you’ve been to busted up Manhattan for a week, completed the main game, and did a few of the dreadful side quests, there’s not much game outside of the Dark Zone.

Destiny‘s harder content forced players to examine their weaknesses and strengths. Should you help your team with a sniper rifle or be a tank to lure the enemies away from your sniper? Just little strategies you were able to do in Destiny kept things interesting.

Winner: Destiny

Final Verdict

There’s nothing really wrong with The Division. I think it’s a really fun game. But when I kept comparing the two similar games, I found myself wishing this game did more than what it did. The Division and Destiny comparisons have been made on several sites and forums. It’s inevitable since they’re really unique shooters. But apples to apples, Destiny‘s core game had more content that kept you going than The Division in my opinion. It has more interesting design in terms of gear and worlds. It’s side content is more fun. But if you can’t stand sci-fi games or get sick playing first-person shooters, then The Division is probably going to be more your style.

Interested in a cheaper VR experience and have a PlayStation 4 already, or hoping for PC drivers? Sony has announced today that the PlayStation 4’s PlayStation 4 will release this year in October for the price of $399 in the US.

Some new information hit about it as well confirming a cinematic mode with 3 levels of zoom to play all of your previous PlayStation 4 games on it as well. Cinematic mode is like sitting in a virtual movie theater. As someone that’s played on the Oculus Rift DK2 before, it’s cool but not the reason to buy one. 250 games in development as well.

Another surprise is some sort of Star Wars Battlefront VR experience will be had. No details as of yet. Probably just a single mode to look around in. Even better, Rez is also launching the same day.

When the closed beta dropped for Tom Clancy’s The Division, I was a little less than thrilled with the product. The missions felt flat and while I knew the enemies were bullet sponges, I wasn’t expecting the amount of bullets it would take to take down a single enemy on hard. There’s been several games I’ve enjoyed over the years with damage absorbing enemies including Destiny and Borderlands. But I guess when you see an enemy with nothing but a hoodie taking a shotgun blast to the face and not dying, the immersion becomes a bit dry. It was my biggest issue with the beta. It wasn’t until I jumped into the Dark Zone – The Division‘s hardcore PVP area – that I grasped the spectacular game I was getting into. During the last open beta, I spent the majority of my time in the Dark Zone with friends and had a blast. Now that the final product is out, it’s time to roam the entirety of New York City’s quarantined disaster zone.

The Division is a massive multiplayer third-person role-playing game. From screenshots and some videos, you’d assume it’s a typical Tom Clancy cover shooter but it’s not. It’s important to understand this so you won’t set yourself up for disappointment. While it’s true you are shooting in third-person while sitting behind cover, the game is an action role-playing game. A headshot (as described above) will not instantly kill an enemy unless you have an incredible amount of damage associated with your weapon. Headshots will generally do a critical amount of damage to an enemy or player and will rarely end the digital life of your enemy. When you shoot an enemy, you’ll see numbers flying off the enemy indicating the damage you’ve done similar to many RPGs.

Since this is a cooperative multiplayer game, they’ve mastered how you join your friends. Instead of inviting friends through external means, you can do everything in-game in a group management menu or by pulling up the map. On the map, you’ll see dots representing the location of your friends and with a click of a button, you can invite or join them with ease. While Destiny was incredible easy to join friends as well, there’s a better visual representation of this in The Division.

I won’t reveal too much of the story but I’d say that while portions of it are interesting, the main story falls flat and isn’t very “Tom Clancy”. It’s about as ridiculous as some of the older Call of Duty campaigns. The Division takes place after a small pox-like virus breaks out in New York City during Black Friday. The government quarantines Manhattan and brings in some military personal known as the Division to stop violent rioters and the controlling gangs. The story really never goes places and is just a filler to break up the monotony of shooting and looting things. Most of the more interesting events comes from exploring the map and running into ECHOs and cell phones. ECHOs are found around the city using surveillance footage that display a holographic image of a specific event around you. You can interact with some of them to really display how violent people have become during this outbreak.

Most of your time spent is leveling up your character, finding or crafting loot, and upgrading your main base for additional skills to use in the war zone. There’s also the Dark Zone I mentioned before, but we’ll get to that later as that seems to be more of an end game experience along with the daily challenges. Crafting new and better gear is done by finding blueprints obtained by completing various mission types. Crafting resources are found by breaking down items you find, completing side objectives such as holding a position for a few minutes, or by finding loot containers throughout the city.

Every weapon you pick up has slots to mod certain aspects of the gun. Your basic AK-47 will have options to add a scope and extended ammo clips to give yourself an extra boost for your guns. Weapons also are color coordinated to quickly identify rarity similar to many loot based games. I’m sure level 30 characters won’t want to waste time picking up common white items.

One of the best features in the customization department is the ability to change your character’s look without adjusting affecting your armor’s stats as clothing options and armor are completely separate from each other. You’ll find new puffy jackets that you can change out and still keep that nice vest on that protects you oh so well. There’s also sets for clothing so you don’t look like a guy without a sense of style.

If you couldn’t tell already, The Division is a nice looking game. The aesthetics may not be incredibly interesting since it’s focus is on a real city under martial law. But it is a very beautiful game without load times and a smooth frame rate, even on consoles. If you’ve seen pictures of Manhattan and compare them to in-game footage, it’s remarkably accurate. Outside of having great texture quality and a sense of realism for it’s location, the effects that are presented are top notch. Flames engulfing a room make for a real sense of urgency to evacuate the area. There’s times where I’d leave a mission area and be in the middle of a heavy snow storm that caused my view to be extremely limited. And that’s a good thing in terms of eye candy.

Like a lot of Ubisoft titles, there’s an overwhelming amount of side missions to do and collectibles to track down. The side missions range from bunkering down while defending waves of oncoming enemies to protecting a group of friendly units from bandits. It all boils down to shooting every enemy dead or a timer runs out. Everything I’ve ran into has been very repetitive outside of the main campaign. If you find grinding out the same thing over and over a blast, the side missions may be up your alley. But I’ve grown tired of Ubisoft’s copy/paste formula for collectibles and side missions. I was hoping for something different this time around.

Before I explain the biggest issue with the core game, I wanted to go into how the missions are structured. While exploring sections of New York City, you’ll run across main story missions in different areas of the map. These missions will be the meat of the game until you hit that teasing Dark Zone. Brutal honesty here: they’re not very interesting outside of seeing different environments. Each story mission require you to kill waves of enemies until you reach the end where a deadly boss appears with an amazing amount of health and damage. And each mission is exactly that and it never strays from this formula. They’re fun in a group of friends, like most any coop experience, but the missions never try to hide how repetitive they are.

In regards to playing with others, the downside is that anyone that’s a higher player level will make the main missions too difficult to play for players that’re too low level. An example would be someone joining a friend who’s level 30 and trying to take on the first story mission. The higher level player will buff the enemies up to the point where it’s unplayble for a low level player. I had this happen myself and it wasn’t a very fun experience. So make sure you run with your friends of a similar level until you hit the cap.

The comparisons of vanilla Destiny and The Division have been made several times, Destiny being the standard to learn from. The only thing different in favor of The Division in terms of missions is I don’t have to activate the waves of enemies by using a Ghost at a key location. But all you’re really doing is fighting waves of enemies until the boss dies which is exactly what Destiny did. Only The Division has less interesting enemies and very mediocre AI. And these two things are the most damning parts of the core experience.

The enemies you’ll encounter don’t become more interesting in design than guys wearing hoodies until near the end of the game when you run into military-type soldiers. But I could easily ignore repetitive enemy design if the AI wasn’t a bore to play against. The most complicated thing I’ve seen the enemy do is hide behind cover and occasionally flank. The rest of the time, they’re charging at you like maniacs or climbing the cover they’re behind to shoot at you. It’s really disappointing to see a game in 2016 have less intelligence in combat than Halo: Combat Evolved.

Kicking the difficulty up to hard on each mission doesn’t do anything to solve the laughable AI. Hard creates a super sponge and gives the enemies much more powerful weapons. You’d hope they’d change the behaviors, but they’re the exact same. While Destiny had smarter AI to fight against such as hiding if their shields went down, Destiny‘s hard modes didn’t just cause the enemies to become spongy. It required you to think about which weapons are more effective against a certain enemy’s shield to reveal their softer alien flesh. It’s a real shame that The Division didn’t do more for their hard mode other than create super sponges. But hey, at least the loot drops are better!

The level cap is at 30 and there’s a question about what to do after you finish the campaign. What do you do after the missions are done? Do you just do side quests over and over? Boss fights? Raids (which are releasing at a later date)? As of now, it looks like you’ll grind out materials for blue prints, doing daily challenges, or doing the meat and potatoes content of the game: The Dark Zone.

The Dark Zone sold me on the game and it’s the main reason I wanted to hit my level 30 cap. You can join the Dark Zone at a low level, but it’s almost pointless unless you’re grinding out the separate Dark Zone levels. The Dark Zone is The Division‘s version of PVP. Unlike a lot of modern PVP games, your deaths actually mean something. You may have found an elite boss wandering around the streets that dropped an incredible piece of gear. To take that use this gear, you need to take it to one of the eight different extraction zones. At this point you’ll bunker down and hope that the helicopter gets to you to extract your gear. The kicker? Any player in this mode can kill you and take the gear that you worked hard to get. As an unnamed old man once said in video games, “It’s dangerous to go alone!”. So make sure you bring your gang along. You can also team up with anyone before entering, or while already in the zone. But make sure you trust them. Seeing a sparkly purple item drop is very tempting for some to kill their friends for that sweet loot.

The punishment for mean players is that killing another player forces the attacking player to go into a rogue status. A timer is displayed while the rogue player hopes no one tracks them down. If a rogue player is killed, they’ll drop any loot that they haven’t extracted yet. If you and/or your team kill too many players while in rogue, there’ll be a manhunt marker placed on your heads with a minimum of 5 minutes to pray no one finds you and stops you. Each kill adds more time onto your count down meter so escaping is limited in a lot of cases. The ultimate reward is the satisfaction of survival. The gear you stole isn’t too shabby either.

The Dark Zone will be the core of this game for the lasting players until raids and more content hits. It’s one of the most refreshing experiences in PVP in a good long time. But if you’re more into cooperative experiences with friends and just want to take it easy, there’s enough to keep you busy for a while. The Division has a bit of something for everyone and it’s no wonder it’s a success already.

]]>https://dryvby.wordpress.com/2016/03/10/review-tom-clancys-the-division/feed/2DryvBygood2834037-tom+clancy's+the+division™_20160311212812.jpg2834040-tom+clancy's+the+division™_20160311214111.jpg2834025-tom+clancy's+the+division™_20160310162717.jpg2834043-tom+clancy's+the+division™_20160311222647.jpgCarmageddon: Max Damage coming 2016 to PC/PS4/XB1!https://dryvby.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/carmageddon-max-damage-coming-2016-to-pcps4xb1/
https://dryvby.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/carmageddon-max-damage-coming-2016-to-pcps4xb1/#respondMon, 29 Feb 2016 00:05:01 +0000http://dryvby.wordpress.com/?p=2608]]>Carmageddon is one of those racing games you don’t remember winning an actual race in. But you remember brutally destroying every car, pedestrian, and animal that crossed your path. Most of those familiar with the original game will have fond memories the first time you missed a turn and crashed through a football stadium, switching gears (sorry for the pun) and killing every player for a combo. There’s a race going on?